A girl i am dating previously had an.orgy

Last weekend, in the penthouse of an upscale, downtown hotel, I attended my first sex party. I went with a friend of mine—I’ll call her Anne—who’s been bugging me to come along to this particular event for months, on the grounds that I can’t call myself a true sex writer until I’ve been to an orgy. Fair enough, I thought.

“It’s the best sex party in New York, with the most fun, attractive crowd,” Anne assured me, adding that the attendees are a mix of swingers, “burners” (Burning Man–types), and fetish people. I was skeptical. How amazing could the participants of a paid orgy really be, even if it was invite-only? I also had serious reservations about whether I would actually be able to hook up amidst a crowd of “roughly 100 people.” But I trusted Anne, because she knows a lot about this stuff. See, Anne and her husband are in an open marriage: They’re happy, successful, attractive, deeply in love, and they also get to sleep with whomever they want. How unfair.

I’ve written previously about my own attempt to make an open relationship work. The year my girlfriend and I were open, our relationship was strained by arguments and insecurity, and our subsequent attempt at monogamy didn’t work out either. Sadly, two weeks ago, she and I broke up. And I have since finally admitted it to myself: monogamy just isn’t for me. Or at least not right now. The problem is, I’m still in the dark about how to make a nonmonogamous relationship function. It just feels like there’s so much working against you—jealousy, possession, unwilling partners, and a weighty social stigma. My hope was that spending time with Anne and her husband, as well as a room full of orgiastic swingers, would give me some insight into how I could have my relationship cake and eat it too.

According to Anne, a 32-year-old nurse, being nonmonogamous wasn't a desire but a necessity. "In my late teens and early twenties I had two long-term relationships, one with a man and one with a woman,” she explained. “In both cases they were older than me, and both tried to convince me that when you really love someone, you don’t want to be with other people. I thought that because they were older, they knew better. So I tried it, but both times I failed miserably—it was stressful, I cheated so much, and I hurt my partners.” During that time Anne realized that, in fact, her desire to get laid by other people didn’t mean she loved her partners any less. “Restricting myself doesn’t make me happy,” she went on, “so after the second relationship ended, I said, ‘This is stupid, I’m never promising monogamy to anyone ever again.’”